On my "Golden Birthday" I moved the family from Appleton (WI.) over to the inner city of Onalaska...about 2.5 miles from where I'm at now. The day set a record for heat ... 103°F..
I was borrowing my BIL's pickup, which my sister had rear-end a UPS truck with no more than 4 days previously, which rendered the AC non-functional and required the requisite logging-chain to secure the hood into a down-ward position in order to make said vehicle "road-worthy."
Having picked up and pre-loaded a 16' U-Chuck (method of packing assistance by 11 y.o. son) Trailer the night before and "The Skylark" stuffed to the 4 doors with the wife's "delicates," we started the day at 0530, stopping for some "morning sliders" (sausage & eggs) at the first open Mickey Ds we should have passed. The rest of the day was all downhill from there.
I had until 1700 to get the trailer back to the U-Haul place or blow the moving budget all to hell. I made it by 10 minutes following the 3rd trip over to Onalaska and back to Appleton, throwing stuff in and out...leaving the wife & kid at the new place...fighting over the rationing of T.P. our first trip over had inspired. On the final trip back, it was just the trailered 14' SmokerCraft and assorted odds & ends that could stay put in the back of the PU...all by myself.
Then...around 2145...
About 110 miles from the end of the broiling, non-AC day, the PU, at about 55mph, lets loose with a *POW!* and then a really severe shuddering. I immediately let up off the gas and pull over to side of the rode...about 15' from a, what must been a week-old, 150-lbs., sun-ripened piece of road-kill deer, appropriately marked by the State, but not-yet-removed. And...I'm down-wind from its bloated carcass and its entourage of maggots & flies.
After the initial surprised-inhalation of Nature's version of tear-gas and some of the flying-protein, I let loose a Yetti's version of a primal-scream, asking God why he hadn't struck me down yet. No answer. Just the increasing awareness that the buzzing of the flies was being joined in by billions of ditch-water spawned mosquitoes...99.9999% females. BTW...did I forget to mention the part about the passenger's door window not being able to be rolled up at all? Well, I remembered it about this time...again.
After determining that whatever didn't kill me when it went to hell about 300' further back on the road wasn't going to kill me if I drove a little slower NOW, I'd leave "Dante's Roadside Diner & Po Poure" and continue westward at a slower pace, with flashers blazing away through the darkness, heat and loneliness of Western Wisconsin...
Since the shuddering was so bad, I could drive no faster than 25mph...for the rest of the trip. I pulled into one of the few still-opened gas stations a little further up the road and finally found what the problem was...one of the 7 blades from the fan detached, flying through the washer-fluid container AND the left-side inner-wheel well...completely missing the outer fender and the tire! Still, realizing that a vibrating engine still isn't a good thing...I finally limp into the "new abode" around 0200-something on the day after my 31st B-Day.
Less than two years later, I moved us to where I'm at now...
Need I say more? You do the math. HINT: "X" = years and involves the numerals "0" & "2" and will increment by the following formula each succeeding March 15th: "X + 1"
BTW II.: I !%&*%*&^$#%$@ HATE MOVING!!!
BTW III.: I ended buying my BIL a replacement fan blade the following day AND a replacement water-pump two weeks later.
